Some questions for DemocracyNow!

by Vaska

What’s going on at DemocracyNow! for Amy Goodman to be interviewing a Saudi crown prince on the subject of combatting Daesh? A Saudi crown prince born in Amman, Jordan, who’s arguing that there’s no military solution to the problem of Daesh, to boot? [Does the good prince perchance want us to negotiate with the heart-and-lung eating jihadis, i.e. de fact recognize their “Islamic State” in Syria?]

Like anyone else who’s been paying attention to what’s been happening in Syria and the countries around it since 2011, Amy Goodman knows full well that the Saudis are the major financiers of Daesh/ISIL and that Jordan has been the chief training area for the so-called FSA. Throughout 2013 and 2014, fighters nominally identified as FSA members would, once trained by the US military advisors in Jordan, go back to Syria where they routinely defected to either Al Nusra or Daesh. Knowing that, how can the doyenne of the alternate media in the USA permit herself to conduct a full interview with a Abdel Bari Atwan, a known supporter of terrorism, who claims, like a State Department spokesperson, that “using military solution alone, it means we are prolonging the problem. We are strengthening the Islamic State”?

Note also how Goodman lets her interlocutor ramble on about the use of the term Daesh, without once pointing out that ISIL dislikes it intensely because it sounds like the Arabic term for trouble-maker or sower of discord — and without once challenging him on his own preference of the term “Islamic State,” which makes these cannibals sound like a legitimate political actor or questioning his claim that Daesh is somehow not the group’s “correct name”. With his insistence on “Islamic State” as the proper name to use for the group that has been beheading Christians, non-compliant Sunnis and Alawites in Syria alike, Abdel Bari Atwan and Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein sound like their PR men in the West, where the latter is the current United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

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TheSweetAntithesis

Im sorry I am not sure I understand this post. Apparently the Saudi prince’s preferred term is Islamic State. So is ISIS’s. The UK parliament in debating whether to go to war apparently deliberately used the term Daesh as some kind of schoolyard taunt.

Where is the controversy here? You would prefer them to be referred to as Daesh also? Why?

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Dec 18, 2015 12:49 PM

John

“What is the role of ISIS (Israel Secret Intelligence Service) in all of this in terms of promoting the zionist Yinon Plan?”
Also, “Is al-Baghdadi a CIA/Mossad plant? “

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Dec 3, 2015 6:58 PM

false salaam

is this the same saudi prince that co-own fox network with rupert murdoch?

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Dec 3, 2015 8:48 AM

Steven Hunt

This is disgusting.

I used to naively have faith in Goodman.

However, during the lead-up to the Libya invasion she features two guests that were pumping propaganda memes that bolstered invasion.

Democracy Now ! Has been horrid with the issue of Ukraine, as well.

It really creepy.

Goodman is a multimillionaire, and her function is to soften up the left so that they are amendable to US imperialist goals.

I have noted many on the so-called left that repeat outright lies and dubious information memes.

And Goodmam postures as oh-so pious–keeping the flame for the downtrodden and so forth.

She is in the PAcifica Network–which is being run into the ground and caters to lifestyle, niche advocacy–not focused on providing the type of information that helps develop any type of active democratic left.

Follow the money. Almost all of the so-called progressive-left alternative media seems to promulgate information memes that function to confuse their readership–and thus we so no organized anti-imperialist left in the US.

There are a few notable exceptions–but these are the “exceptions to the exceptions to the rulers”.

Sad but true.

I would throw a squishy tomato at this type of fake if I wouldn’t be hauled to Guantanamo.

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Dec 3, 2015 1:41 AM

devil's advocate

even if so, there is one thing to count on:
the outdated world view and perception about the human being, within these elites who might have swallowed partly the mrs. goodman and her agenda.
a lot of people will see in that interview, what actually can be seen there, not what goodman or anyone interprets of it.
think twice.

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Dec 7, 2015 5:02 AM

Michaelk

What’s disturbing is that when liberals, or the soft-left, social democrats, move decisively to the political right; as they have almost everywhere in the West over the last few decades and adopt and accept the core ideas of neo-conservatism in relation to the economy, social policy and our overseas wars; then, basically, the function of an opposition, within the boundaries of liberal capitalist democracy… evaporates and we find ourselves in a new kind of State that’s totalitarian in character and has become virtually a one-party state with a marginalized majority. Which, of course, is somewhat ironic and paradoxical in countries that regard themselves as being paragons of all the best democratic values.

Follow the money. Democracy Now receives considerable funding from Carnegie Foundation and M. Kaplan Foundation. Both are historic CIA pass through foundation (http://www.swans.com/library/art14/barker08.html and Who Paid the Piper: The CIA Cultural Cold War by Frances Stonor Saunders).

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Dec 2, 2015 6:03 AM

sharpin la

Amy Goodman is a fraud. They can’t say Daesh because it’s not scary enough for Christian Zionists to pull them closer to the Talmudists; only a term with the blatant use of the word Islamic, Islam or Muslim will suffice. Ignoring entirely that the Saud royal family is in fact Jewish… and Saudi Arabia was created as an empire to stomp out real Islam to supplant it with a putrid Talmudist style oppression known as Wahhabism.

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Dec 2, 2015 2:20 AM

Oddlots

They’ve been generally bad on the Ukraine as well. They will host Cohen a few times but don’t seem to take in what he’s actually saying. Disappointing.

My biggest disappointment prior to hearing they’d hosted the Saudi halfling prince or whatever title he goes by was that interview with a U.S. national here:

Public Broadcasting in the USA has long been sliding into the Neo-Conservative Washington consensus camp! NPR in particular lied endlessly about US victories in Afghanistan, every week another upbeat story of military victory, dead Taliban leaders, and GI’s building girl’s schools. Never mind it was all lies, as the Taliban ownership of 3/4 of the country testified to!
The American liberals have shifted to backing the State department agenda in near total. PBS finds no fascists in Ukraine, and Assad is evil while ISIS and Al-Qaeda are called moderate FSA. That again is total lies.
Why and how have American liberals go over to Neo-Conservative agendas? That is a good question. PBS is rabidly anti Russian, though Russia has done nothing, but defend it self when attacked. Russia has a huge christian revival, some say liberals in America hate this, but loved the old Soviet peoples. Who knows.
The Washington consensus has taken full control of world medias. I read the Swedish press, and they are no different that the NYT or Guardian. All Neo-Conservative, all anti Russia all the time. Liberals are now our new war mongers. Orwell would recognize what has happened here, he predicted it! If you can’t figure things out now a day, just look at Orwell’s “double think” and “new speak”. One reality, that of Washington, is allowed in the west, we get it from TV, Radio, News papers. Only internet blogs like this one remain to spread the truth.

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Dec 2, 2015 1:51 AM

Soruche

Where’s the link to the interview? The one you have provided links to an interview with Abdel Bari Atwan and not the Saudi Prince.

Look at the transcript of the interview, which is posted just below the video itself.

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Dec 2, 2015 2:27 AM

Soruche

I’ve looked at the transcript and there is just one paragraph where he makes a fairly benign statement about Paris and Beirut and Sanaa (irony) burning and this being dark times in international relations. I am not suggesting that you are making all of this up but I am really struggling to find anything with this guy on democracy now except the one paragraph. Are you not also having the same problem? Maybe they took it down.

Thank you for the tip. I’ve just checked it and found that I had mistakenly attributed two quotes to prince Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein instead of to Abdel Bari Atwan, whom an Arab source describe thus: “The Abd Al-Bari Atwan [appearing] on CNN is completely different from the Abd Al-Bari Atwan on the Al-Jazeera network or in his Al-Quds Al-Arabi daily. On CNN, Atwan speaks solemnly and with total composure, presenting rational and balanced views. This is in complete contrast with his fuming appearances on Al-Jazeera and in Al-Quds Al-Arabi, in which he whips up the emotions of multitudes of viewers and readers.”